Wherefore I praised the dead, which are already dead
Truly and properly so; not in a figurative sense, as dead sinners, men dead in trespasses and sins; nor carnal professors, that have a name to live, and are dead; nor in a civil sense, such as are in calamity and distress, as the Jews in captivity, or in any affliction, which is sometimes called death: but such who are dead in a literal and natural sense, really and thoroughly dead; not who may and will certainly die, but who are dead already and in their graves, and not all these; not the wicked dead, who are in hell, in everlasting torments; but the righteous dead, who are taken away from the evil to come, and are free from all the oppressions of their enemies, sin, Satan, and the world. The Targum is,
``I praised those that lie down or are asleep, who, behold, are now dead;''a figure by which death is often expressed, both in the Old and New Testament; sleep being, as the poet F1 says, the image of death; and a great likeness there is between them; Homer F2 calls sleep and death twins. The same paraphrase adds,
``and see not the vengeance which comes upon the world after their death;''see ( Isaiah 57:1 Isaiah 57:2 ) . The wise man did not make panegyrics or encomiums on those persons, but he pronounced them happy; he judged them in his own mind to be so; and to be much more